e value of the timber for coming generations when the
frees approach maturity. It has afforded me pleasure to send nut trees
to friends in various counties of the state and we shall watch with
interest, the reports on their growth and development under the many
variations of soil and climate. The butternut in many parts of the
country is rapidly disappearing. To save this beautiful tree with its
delicately flavored nuts, it will undoubtedly be necessary to take it
into extensive cultivation.

Although apart from the subject perhaps, it may be interesting to refer
to the application of forestry to a woodlot containing native nut trees.
Like many farmers who regard every tree as just a tree, useful for
timber or fire wood, I found several years ago that indiscriminate
cutting on my woodlot was destroying walnuts, along with the commoner
species of the stand. My first step was to halt the cutting of all black
walnuts, hickories, butternuts, oaks and beeches on the seven-acre
woodlot. I took an inventory of these trees and found there were 160
shagbark hickories from 10 to 25 years old, five butternuts about 20
years old, and four black walnuts about 25 years old. These, of course,
were not "tolerant trees" like the evergreens, and most of them were
rapidly deteriorating from being overcrowded by more rapidly growing and
less desirable neighbors. All _of_ them had been retarded in growth by
the crowded condition of the stand. Inaugurating a process of judicious
thinning with a view to giving the nut trees the advantage, the result
in a single season was surprising. Under the beneficent influence of
ample sun, air and root sustenance, the butternuts and black walnuts
bore fine crops for the first time, in the season following the winter
thinning process. The young hickories contented themselves with making
their first annual growth in years. And, Oh joy of realized hopes, in
this the third season since letting the sun into the native nut grove,
nearly all of the older shagbark hickories bore their first crops! And
now I have a nut plantation, that might have been ere this, burned up as
fire-wood, at no expense whatever, since the thinning out process
produced a very welcome supply of fire wood in these days of high-priced
coal.

In a recent bulletin of the United States Department of Agriculture,
"Value to Farm Families of Food, Fuel and use of House," there are some
illuminating statistics on "The Farmer's Income" and "The